This invention relates generally to the control of production facilities, and more particularly to a system for optimizing the output of a system of production facilities.
At least some known production systems include a plurality of production facilities that operate in parallel such that each facility receives production resources independently of the other facilities in the system. The output of such production facilities may be linked via a common stream of commerce. For example, an electric utility may have a plurality of independent generating facilities located throughout a territory. Each generating facility may receive fuel from independent suppliers and the output of each facility may be coupled through a common transmission system or grid, such that, if one facility became unable to deliver a required output to the grid, another facility should be able to increase its output to accommodate for the shortfall. This process is nearly transparent to users or customers of the grid.
Each facility may have operating characteristics that are different than each other facility in the production system, such that the operating efficiency of each facility may be different than the operating efficiency of every other facility. Operating efficiency may be defined in terms of the utilization of resources per unit of output. For example, within an electric utility, although several resources, such as fuel, labor, emissions allowances, and water may be used to generate power, improving the efficiency of each facility's use of fuel may cause the largest impact to the economical generation of electricity as a whole. Ideally, each facility may be operated individually to facilitate maximizing the facility efficiency, or to generate the production output using the least amount of resources. However, to increase the operating efficiency of the production system, each individual facility may be operated to facilitate maximizing the efficiency of the production system, which may not be the same as operating each facility at its individual optimum efficiency level.
Accordingly, to facilitate maximizing the efficiency of the production system, at least some known power production systems attempt to dispatch power generating facilities in an economical manner by adjusting load on each facility to facilitate attaining the highest system-wide efficiency possible. Such systems utilize testing methods to determine a cost of resource inputs required at each level of production output of each facility to develop an economic dispatch curve for the production system.
Testing of facility components is periodically conducted under various conditions to develop individual component efficiency curves, which are used to develop the economic dispatch curves. More specifically, testing of the production facility is conducted periodically to verify the correctness of component efficiency to overall facility efficiency assumptions. However, due to the periodic scheduling of efficiency testing, the validity of the testing results and the assumptions underlying the efficiency calculations may only be reliable for a short time period until the tests are run again. For example, various causes of uncertainty may undesirably introduce misleading data into calculations relied upon to achieve optimal production system dispatch, which as a result may produce inefficient system operations. Testing components and testing the facility at shortened intervals may improve economic dispatch curves, but testing is labor intensive may require operational limits on the facility during the time period the testing is taking place.